SAN FRANCISCO - Colorado Buffaloes head coach Tad Boyle has traveled a long road to end up in Boulder, just over 50-miles from his hometown of Greeley, Colorado. That journey has provided him a unique perspective when compared to many in his same line of work, many who follow the more common blueprint to be a head man.

As you would expect from the frank, composed and insightful Boyle, there are no regrets. There are no feelings that he made any true mistakes along the way. He doesn't claim to have a perfect record or to have made every necessary adjustment during each of the hundreds of timeouts he's sat through.

He understands his strengths, and his flaws. Both sides of him are simply experience, steps that enabled him to do the seemingly impossible, turn Colorado into a winning basketball program.

"We're all made up of our experiences," he said. "The experience that I brought to this job, from Northern Colorado, Wichita State, Jacksonville State in Alabama and then you get a job like the University of Colorado, and look at all the things that you have, relative to the places you've been, I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.

"We had charter planes to go to games-you have so many things-a new practice facility getting built, if you can be successful at Jacksonville State and you can be successful at Wichita State before it became the program it is today, if you can be successful at Northern Colorado, you can do it at Colorado."

What made it tricky, though, was that there was little history to build upon. Even when traditional bluebloods like Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA, Duke or North Carolina have experienced down years, it is expected for them to make their way back to prominence. Besides the program's name selling itself, there are previous paths to follow that could show a new coach the way to winning.